GRINDING OLD INTO YOUNG.
(From an old woodcut, circa 1720.)
FIVE ALLS.
(From an old print by Kay. The figures represent Dr Hunter, a famous Scotch clergyman; Erskine the lawyer; a farmer; His Sacred Majesty George III.; and the gentleman whose name should never be mentioned to ears polite.)
The George and Thirteen Cantons, kept by the great Bob Travers, is another odd combination, occurring in Church Street, Soho; it is, however, easily explained when we learn that there is another public-house called the Thirteen Cantons, in King Street, also in Soho. This sign was put up in reference to the thirteen Protestant cantons of Switzerland—a compliment to the numerous Swiss who inhabit the neighbourhood.
But the strangest combination of all is that of the George and Vulture. At present there are three public-houses in London with this sign: one in St George-in-the-East, one in Wapping, and one in Haberdasher Street, Hoxton. As in the “Live Vulture,” (see [p. 224],) the only obvious explanation for this strange combination seems to be the possibility of a vulture having been exhibited at this house. Vultures were still considered great curiosities as late as the eighteenth century. In 1726, one of the attractions at Peckham Fair was a menagerie, and amongst the animals exhibited the vulture was described in the following terms:—
“The noble Vulture Cock, brought from Archangall, having the finest talons of any bird that seeks her prey; the forepart of his head is covered with hair; the second part resembles the wool of a black; below that is a white ring, having a ruff that he cloaks his head with at night.”
It is a name of some standing. “Near Ball Alley was the George Inn, since the Fire, rebuilt with very good houses, well Inhabited, and warehouses, being a large open yard, and called George Yard, at the farther end of which is the George and Vulture Tavern, which is a large house and of a great trade, having a passage into St Michael’s Alley,” [Cornhill].[417] There was another tavern of this name on the east side of the high road, nearly opposite Bruce Green, Tottenham, in early times much frequented by the citizens of London taking their recreations. It is mentioned in the “Search after Claret” as early as 1691. Several coins of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and Charles I. were discovered on pulling down the old house. A coat of arms of Queen Elizabeth was fixed over the front door, but at the demolition of the building it was put up at the back of a house in Hale Lane. After the fashion of the time, the house was duly puffed up in newspaper poems. The following is copied from a newspaper-cutting circa 1761-62, and as it enumerates the attractions of a suburban tea-garden of the period, may be quoted here at full length:—